


ーfor hurting, for healing, for holding.

by unchartedandunknown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ashe goes pspspspspsps in a demon tunnel and fails to mind his own business, M/M, Smoking, vague mentions of religion/death/trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unchartedandunknown/pseuds/unchartedandunknown
Summary: There’s a demon said to be haunting the tunnel in the broken-off road, and Ashe is seeking to make a bargain.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc
Comments: 18
Kudos: 58
Collections: 2020 Ultra Rarepair Big Bang





	1. awakening

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was made for the 2020 Ultra Rarepair Big Bang!! I collaborated with [@abelas_vhenan](https://twitter.com/abelas_vhenan), who made the [two wonderful art pieces](https://twitter.com/abelas_vhenan/status/1300575916834258945?s=20) that appear in this chapter ❤
> 
> I wrote this chapter while listening to Lincoln's Saint Bernard.

A path ends abruptly, inches from the overflowing forest beyond it. Supposedly the path was going to be paved into a road, but the lack of people and abundance of nature had it abandoned, let for time. The signs of humanity - the dark cement road, the overarching structure of the yawning tunnel - is overrun by the forest, claimed by wildlife.

The tunnel is a dark, musty thing. There’s something about it that lingers after a sighting, the whisper of something not-quite-right, the feeling of being hunted by an unseen predator, just beyond your periphery. Not even animals will occupy the space, and the sound of bugs humming in the air is nowhere to be found.

In the stickiness of summer heat, Ashe pries his shirt off his sweaty chest to fan himself lightly and brushes strands of overhanging leaves hiding the entrance of the underpass. The darkness stretches seemingly endless, the silence overpowering the unrelenting hum of heat.

It’s colder inside, like a shiver of someone walking over his grave.

Ashe shifts uncomfortably, takes one last look into the sunlight before dropping the leaves and condemning himself to darkness. His breath echoes in a way it shouldn’t with the amount of plants surrounding him, the closeness of the walls inside. He brings his hands up and claps, beat unsteady, running away from his clumsy hands. When nothing happens, he calms, reclaiming the beat for his own, and takes up a solemn, chilling song.

Something stirs in the air. Ashe feels himself being pulled forward on the inhale of a great beast waking and falls to shaky knees. He keeps the song going as his voice wavers.

The voice that speaks is a niggle in his mind. Ashe is expecting something great and booming, the kind of voice that can shatter across airwaves and raise the sea. Instead, he hears a whisper light as a wind current, the kind of whisper you hear when someone is talking about you behind your back. The hair on the back of his neck raises at the sound, and he yearns suddenly for the summer sun and its heat to replace this cold.

_Who goes here?_

Ashe’s voice tapers off, unsure.

_Speak. I don’t have timeー_ the voice breaks off. _I suppose I do have time, but I don’t like wasting it with people who won’t even talk. What do you want?_

“You are,” Ashe breathes, in awe and fear, “a demon.”

The voice sounds amused when it says, _Is that what they call us these days?_ The closeness of the sound sends another shiver down Ashe’s back. He can’t see anything in this blinding darkness, and he doubts he wants to. _What do you need?_

He didn’t think he would get this far. When his friend had told him about the demon in the tunnel, an old city myth traded by word of mouth from the cautious elders to the gossiping children, he had only wanted to scour the tunnel to see if it really was haunted.

Ashe licks his dry lips. “I wanted a bargain.”

_Doesn’t everyone?_ the demon says. _I can do anything you want at the right price. I can destroy nations. I can make you an army, I can make you a_ king. _Anything you desire - riches, power, people, what-have-you - is yours...at a price._

_These hands have wounded,_ the demon says.

_These hands have hurt._

_These hands have killed._

_So what would you have me do for you with these blood-stained hands, oh nameless one?_

“My sister’s gone to a training camp over the summer,” Ashe says. “Can you make sure she returns safely?”

A pause hangs in the air. If Ashe were less scared, he would interpret it as surprise.

_Is that it?_

Ashe fidgets with his hands. “Yes. I’mーthere was an accident this year, with the train, you know.”

_Yes,_ the demon says, amused, as if it somehow has access to news channels that covered the accident. Maybe it does. Or maybe it’s going along with whatever Ashe says.

“There was an earthquake, which was strong enough to send the train off its rails. Another train ran into it from behind. There were...a lot of deaths.” If Ashe looks into the darkness, he can pretend he’s speaking to someone right in front of him. “I don’t want my sister to die.”

_How cute,_ the demon purrs. _Fine. Name your price._

“Errー” Ashe pats his pockets. He really didn’t plan ahead for this. “Uh, do you take cashー”

_Venmo is fine,_ the demon jokes. Remote as the location of the tunnel is, Ashe has to wonder how it knows about things like _Venmo. Aren’t you a naive little thing. You think money can buy your sister’s life?_

Ashe shrugs, the gesture ashamed and miserable. “I don’t know how this works. I don’t know how demons measure a life.”

_Money is meaningless to beings like us._ The demon seems to ponder for a moment. Ashe takes in the silence, trying to be as still as possible, like that will help him with gaining a lighter exchange. _When your sister travels home, all your luck will be transferred to her. In exchange, you’ll be more likely to run into an accident than her during her time of travel. A life for a life. How’s that?_

Ashe sags in relief. “Thatーthat’s fine. Thank you.” He pauses. “But I thought...demons would _want_ something in exchange. This deal doesn’t give you anything...does it?”

The demon hums. _I guess not,_ it concedes. _Did you feel like giving me something in exchange?_

Ashe frowns at the strange question. Does he _feel_ like giving the demon something in exchange? It sounds like an option, not a necessity. He thought it would be more demanding.

He searches his pockets again. “...I only have this pack of cigarettes.” Christophe’s bad smoking habit, born from his youth. Nowadays, Ashe holds on to whichever pack he impulse-buys for him every week they meet up. It’s such a small thing to offer, but Ashe holds the beat-up pack up anyway. “Do you want this?”

The demon hums in dry amusement. _Leave it on the ground._

Ashe does. He hears something resembling a sigh tremble throughout the tunnel, and when the air stills again he realizes that the demon is gone. Its presence, at least, has left.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The abandoned road with its demon tunnel - as Ashe begins to call it - is located far outside the city, a long trip up a mountain. The cars rush by, monotonic and slow with the winding turns.

Ashe visits the tunnel again.

He leaves his bike parked off to the side of the road a few feet away, and enters. This time, rubber shoes don’t stick to asphalt, and the sun yields under the rolling clouds. The cold is a familiar tremor that works over him.

Ashe claps once, twice. He picks up the beat again, but it doesn’t take his singing to feel the stirring darkness in the air, a wispy wind travelling to gust over his face.

_Hello,_ the voice murmurs in what could be a yawn, as if Ashe has just woken it from a midday nap. _Returning so soon? Were my services not enough the first time?_

“No,” Ashe says. “I mean, yes. Yes, thank you. My sister was able to return safely, thanks to you.

_I don’t see why you’re thanking me,_ the demon says groggily, and inhales. The wind tugs at the back of Ashe’s neck, teases him forward. _You’re clearly reaping the benefits of that._

Ashe lifts up his arm, now in a cast. “You mean this? I got it when I accidentally tripped down the stairs. It’s fine, though, since I’m right handed.”

_Right,_ it says dryly. _Are you here just to tell me this?_

Ashe steels himself. “I need another bargain.”

_I thought so. What do you need?_

“Myー...Lonato is travelling abroad for business. Can you make sure he returns home in one piece?”

_Right, of course, easy. Your Lonato will return home safely. Is that all?_

Ashe sets down another pack of cigarettes, this one brought purposely, unlike the last. “I...hope you’re doing well,” he says, not quite sure what to say.

_As well as I’ll ever be,_ the demon replies wryly.

On the bike ride home, Ashe feels cold all over, like his body’s slugging through water, or mud. There’s a weight to it that wasn’t there before.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_You might want to be careful, little sparrow,_ the demon says when Ashe visits again, already awake before he enters the tunnel. _Or I’ll start to think that you actually enjoy my company._

Ashe shrugs and makes to sit cross-legged on the ground, his back to the entrance, cool wind flowing in. They’re in their own world here, one with sounds that don’t echo but linger in the ground and Ashe’s too-still breath and his palms scratching on rough concrete.

_So. What did you need from me this time?_

“I was wondering,” Ashe says, and he has been wondering since his first encounter, too scared and shy then to speak up, “what the extent of your powers are. Could you make it snow in summer, and make trees shed their leaves in spring? Could you flood a city?” He’s been turning it over in his mind, folding the ideas up and layering them over each other like different-coloured fabrics and textures, trying to force them into something whole.

_Why would you want to flood a city?_

“I don’t. I was just...curious if anyone else asked you.”

_Do you think there are other people stupid enough to come here?_

“Are you calling me an idiot?”

_Maybe,_ the demon says. At least it’s honest. _I think you’re naive, and don’t have a life, to visit me so often._

Ashe hums, relaxed to tap his fingers against the cracked concrete. “I don’t care what you think,” he decides. “I just thought you were lonely.”

Ashe feels the demon turn over what he’s said in its mind. _Me? Lonely?_ The demon scoffs. A breeze whips across Ashe’s face in retaliation. _I don’t need your pity, sparrow._

“It doesn’t need to be pity,” Ashe says. There’s something about its human reaction that makes him want to smile at the rejection, not unkindly, but bordering on familiar, so he does. “It’s like you said. I’m bored and don’t have a life, right?”

The demon doesn’t answer, which Ashe takes as an answer in and of itself. He asks a different question, instead, one that only contains a word: “Sparrow?”

_Songbirds,_ the demon says, _are annoying in that they wake me up in the morning._

He chuckles at that; through his journey up the mountain, Ashe has never heard a bird or any other woodland creature come close to the tunnel, with how instinctive it is to avoid the place.

They stay rooted in the silence. Ashe doesn’t feel the demon leave, but neither of them say anything. Daring to look up into the darkness, Ashe thinks he sees the darkness looking back at him.

No bargains are made on this day, but Ashe leaves a pack of cigarettes on the ground anyway; Christophe buys more than he ever should, and the demon does nothing to discourage Ashe, doesn’t say anything at all when Ashe leaves to return to the muted sky and the wind rustling through the trees.

He hears the birdcalls when he’s reached halfway point down the mountain and slows his bike, not to ease the twisting turns of the road, but to listen to their song a few minutes more. It occurs to him, then, as a wind current pushes from behind as if to speed him further away, that the demon hadn’t answered his questions at all.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Rain falls ice-cold and tries to drown the roads, turning manageable paths into small streams. Ashe continues biking uphill, through mud, past mulches of fallen leaves struggling in the water. The air smells like ozone, the threat of the sky opening up crackling to bear down on the earth. Ashe winds up even faster like he can outpace lightning, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling, legs burning.

Wheels slip on leaves and water but he manages to breach the entrance, weaving through the wet hanging leaves tangling in a wild dance in the wind and coming to a wobbly stop in the darkness. He wipes at his face in a futile effort, dripping wet all over and shivering, and sneezes.

_Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes._

Ashe makes to answer, but an itch resurfaces as he opens his mouth and he sneezes again.

_What are you doing here, visiting in this weather? Were you that desperate for something?_

Ashe sniffles. “I didn’t know it would rain,” he says, voice muffled behind a sleeve, though the wording isn’t quite right - he was _hoping_ that it wouldn’t rain despite the weather signals, the news reports and the light pattering of rain that started after he got off the train. He hugs himself, shaking so hard the trembles could be reverberating into the ground. “I didn’t come here to bargain, this time.”

The demon in the darkness sighs. _Again?_ it says. _You’re wasting your time, coming here for nothing._

“It’s my time to waste,” he says decisively. “I get to decide how to spend it. Besides,” he adds, parking his bike, “I don’t think spending time with you is a waste.”

The demon says nothing. Ashe sits a few feet away from the entrance on the cold ground, curling in on himself to preserve the little heat he has left.

“I brought a deck of cards,” Ashe says awkwardly, breaking the silence,” in my backpack. If you wanna play, since I’ll be here for a while.”

The demon snorts. _With what light?_

“Oh. Well, I can use my phoneー”

_Don’t bother. It’ll be a waste to drain the battery for something like this._ Something _snaps_ in the darkness. A small flame appears to illuminate the tunnel for the first time since Ashe has visited, purple and smoking. The flame comes from the tip of a cigarette, and that the cigarette is attached to a hand, to an arm, to a body and a face that emerges from the inky shadows into the weak, flickering half-light.

_“What?”_ the demon says, a look of amusement flashing across his face.

“Uhーnothing,” Ashe says. There’s something not quite right about the demon that sends a shiver crawling up his back. “I didn’t know demons could transform to look like humans.”

_“It’s easy to transform into something weaker than you.”_ The demon says it, Ashe sees him mouthing the words, but the sounds aren’t coming from his mouth at all. They echo around the tunnel, inside his mind. And there’s something about the demon that’sーoff. Inherently. At a glance it’s hard to tell, because the demon looksーfine. Perfect, even.

...Maybe too perfect.

Ashe looks closer and tries to take him in, the too-sharp shoulder blades, the eyes that don’t absorb light flickering from the end of the cigarette, the way his smile is too-wide to make space for extra teeth a human wouldn’t have, how wispy his clothes look, like they’re shadows spun together into false cloth. The demon looks like he’s wearing a poorly made human-shaped costume.

“You might want to work on your transformation,” Ashe says carefully. “You don’t look all that human.”

The demon doesn’t bother hiding his bared teeth. _“It’s not my fault,”_ he says, taking a seat across from Ashe, mirroring his position of crossed legs. _“The only human I recently came into contact with is you.”_

“It’s a work in progress, then.”

The demon barks out a laugh that sounds more grating on the ears, gunshots going off. Ashe smiles blandly and repeats the reminder of _work in progress_ in his head as he reaches behind him to pull off the soggy backpack sticking to his back, the insides thankfully intact and safely protected from the rain.

“What game do you wanna play?” Ashe asks. He shuffles the deck in his hands. “I know some two-person games; Speed, Double Solitaire, Poker, Cheat, Spades...” Ashe spins one card in his hand in a pirouette. “We can play all of them one at a time, if you want.” He pauses. “Though, I guess Cheat is more fun with more people.”

The demon watches him perform a spring flourish without a thought, catching the fancy flow of cards neatly from one hand to the other. _“You know a lot of card tricks.”_

“I learned a few when I was little,” Ashe says. “Back when we lived on the streets, one of my jobs was as a dealer in a low-end casino.”

_“When you were little?”_ the demon repeats. _“I don’t remember much about human ages, but aren’t you already fairly young?”_

“I’m twenty-six.”

_“Twenty-six...wouldn’t being any younger make that illegal?”_

“Oh, definitely. But when you’re homeless and trying to feed your family, you don’t have much of a choice in what you can do, even if you don’t like doing it.” Ashe shrugs off the topic for another day. “Have you decided which game you wanna play?”

The demon is a fast learner. The two acquaint themselves with the cards and the cold floor and the steady beat of the rainstorm with the occasional crash of thunder. The shadows dance along the hidden graffitied walls with long limbs and empty eyes that scream silent horrors unknown.

Ashe stops looking at the shadows.

The demon doesn’t breathe, only occasionally inhales and exhales plumes of purple clouds that hang over their heads and dissipate. Ashe doesn’t think he needs to breathe. He wonders, then, that if he doesn’t need to breathe, if he has a heart to pump blood into, or blood at all, or if he’s made of the same shadow-like material his clothes are composed of.

_“The rain’s stopped,”_ the demon says. Ashe pauses in the middle of dealing his deck of cards to hear a hush of silence beyond the tunnel. He peels back wet, overhanging leaves to weak sunlight breaching the hazy clouds, pooling into his open hand.

Ashe checks his phone, surprised to see how much time has passed. “I should get back,” he says, and begins packing up the deck. The demon stays seated, watching silently, unblinking. “Did you have fun?”

The demon repeats the word _fun_ silently, lips curling over the word like it means something much more sinister.

“I can bring the cards again, if you want,” Ashe says, the ease of how he handles the cards contradicting the nervousness in his voice. “Or something else?”

_“Fun,”_ the demon says faintly, more air than sound, before it speaks, louder, _“Sure, why not. Do whatever you want.”_

“Okay.”

Before he leaves, he turns around again. “I forgot.” He brings out the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, keeping his grip solid on the pack when the demon grabs it.

_“What.”_

Ashe looks down at the clawed hands centimetres from his own. “Do you have a name? I justーwe never introduced ourselves, before. I’m Ashe.” He tacks on, awkwardly, “Ubert.”

The demon’s face is far too still to be breathing, but after a moment it cracks into an amused grin, all teeth. He blows smoke into Ashe’s face, only it doesn’t smell like any regular cigarette, but something else, sickly sweet that sticks in his throat and curdles in his stomach.

_“Yuri,”_ the demon says, like a warning. He blows out another stream of smoke, this time away from Ashe’s face. _“Fly off now, sparrow. The world won’t wait for you.”_

Ashe bikes home with the scent of Yuri’s cigarette smoke in his lungs, impossible to exhale.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The ice and snow and slush make biking dangerous, but Ashe’s persistence has him braving the cold, squeezing his handlebars tighter, biking as fast as the recent weather will allow. For all his biking to and from school when he was younger, it didn’t quite prepare him for the blistering cold on his cheeks and the great exhales of fog that escape into the misty morning. It’s the kind of winter he would enjoy as a child but would think twice about as an adult, thoughts on delays and how slow the commute will be from school to home. Becoming an adult comes with mostly encumbering baggage and some additional freedom.

Yuri’s in his human form - or, his attempt-at-appearing-human form - when Ashe enters the tunnel with his flashlight on, curled into a tight ball. It takes two uncertain steps forward for Ashe to guess that he’s probably asleep and call his name softly. Yuri stirs, blinking against the onset brightness, an eye peeking out the colour of a twilit evening.

_“Back so soon?”_ he murmurs, taking in the thickness of the coat Ashe is wearing, the fluffy ear mufflers and mittens. _“How much time has passed?”_

“Two months,” Ashe replies, shining the light off to the side so it isn’t facing Yuri directly.

Yuri yawns and stretches, wincing at the audible crack in his limbs and back. _“I don’t understand human bodies...they hurt all the time, all over. This form isn’t even that old.”_

Ashe laughs. “It sucks, but at least we’re not that animal that...what was it? The male form of the species evolved so that the tusks would grow to eventually pierce into its own skull and kill them.” Bernadetta would know the name, maybe.

_“Interesting.”_

“It’s almost New Year’s.” Ashe settles on the ground a few feet in front of Yuri. “Christmas was a few days ago.”

Yuri hums, his disinterest in human traditions apparent. _“So?”_

“I got you a present.”

Yuri looks up at this, eyes narrowed in trepidation. His form seems to sharpen into existence as Ashe pulls out a rectangular box wrapped up and tied with a shoddy bow from his backpack, taut as a bowstring. _“What is that?”_

Ashe pauses at Yuri’s recoil, slowly unwrapping the gift himself and opening the box. “They’re...shoes?” When Yuri only glances between him and the open box with pristine black leather booths, Ashe continues, “Since you didn’t have anything on your feet, and it’s cold here, I thought it would be nice to get you something.”

_“I don’t need it.”_ The bluntness of it, the way Yuri almost spits the words has Ashe confused. It makes more sense when Yuri continues, _“Demons don’t get presents, we don’t accept presents, and we certainly don’t take anything for free.”_

“Oh,” Ashe says, puzzled by this new fact, adding it up to his previous bargains. “Will you take it for me, then?”

_“What?”_

“So that I know you won’t be cold in this tunnel. I brought socks, too, and two blankets with me.” The extra baggage was heavy the whole ride here, and bulged from his backpack like a camel’s hump, but the thought of Yuri alone in the tunnel without anything to protect him made Ashe feel a certain sense of loss, like a lone flag waving on top of an abandoned castle. “I’d take comfort in knowing that you were safe. Does that work as a deal?”

_“That’s not how...”_ the demon trails off irritably before he seems to change his mind, snarls _“Give me that,”_ and swipes the box from Ashe’s arms.

“Oh, wait, here are the socks first, they’re the extra fuzzy kindー” everyone likes fuzzy socks, right? “ーI didn’t think the colour would matter since you wouldn’t see them much, soー” they were a bright, hot pink, due to the fact that Ashe hadn’t seen much of the colour in the tunnel. “Sorry if you don’t like them? I can buy you another kind if you don’t like them.”

Yuri silently slides them on. As Ashe waits for him to tear them to shreds or take them off, he simply wiggles his toes, stares at the socks in the light of the flashlight, and reaches for the shoes, which Ashe is even more unsure of due to the fact that he’d guessed Yuri’s shoe size from their similar height.

But it seems he had nothing to worry about; the shoes fit fine, snug on Yuri’s feet. The socks peek out a little from the top, a flash of pink. Yuri ties to boots closed using the one-loop method, not the bunny ears method Ashe was taught when he was younger.

“Do you like them?”

_“...They’re not bad,”_ Yuri admits, which Ashe will take as a victory.

He pulls out the blankets too, extras that were kept in storage in Lonato’s house, a regular blanket and a comforter that he’d struggled to stuff into his backpack before leaving for the train, and Yuri takes them with the reluctance of a street cat being offered scraps of food, slowly, suspiciously waiting for the exception behind Ashe’s words.

Nothing comes; Ashe produces Christmas leftovers in containers and hot chocolate in thermoses. Ashe doesn’t miss how quickly Yuri inhales the food, the glint of hunger in his eyes or the way his hands wrap around the thermos like he’s trying to absorb the heat into his palms, or how he conceals all his want with a sigh as he places empty containers on the ground and surveys Ashe like he’s hiding something.

“I’ll bring more food next time. And pillows,” he adds, tucking away the containers, backpack lighter than when he arrived.

He leaves another pack of cigarettes on the ground like a promise of his return.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


And then he does.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Again and again, and again, in repetition.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Throughout his visits - every few months, if his schedule permits it - Yuri wordlessly accepts the things Ashe gives, pillows and blankets and sweet treats and books, the look on his face winding up tighter and tighter with each gift until Yuri lashes out one day like a cornered animal, _“Why do you keep doing this?”_ He’s gotten better at speaking, but the words still have a faint echo to them, his mouth a beat behind.

“Keep doing what?” Ashe is faintly surprised to find him awake when he enters the tunnel; usually Yuri will be buried underneath the blankets until he emerges, sleep-worn, rising with squinted eyes into Ashe’s flashlight, his form flickering like a candlelight tossed in the wind as he tries to assume something corporeal. Today Yuri is already awake and cross-legged, the comforter wrapped around his body, a cigarette being smoked to the nub, the faint colour of it fading into darkness.

_“This.”_ Yuri waves his hand around like Ashe will understand. _“The games. The books. The food. What do you want from me that costs so much?”_

Costs so much? “Yuri, I don’tーwant, anything.” Ashe drops down in front of him on the cracked concrete, turns the flashlight up from below their faces like they’re children telling each other ghost stories. “I just wanted to be your friend.” Costs so much? Pillows and books and throwaway thingsー “I wanted to get to know you.”

Yuri stares back uncomprehendingly. For how calm he sits there, cigarette forgotten between his clawed fingers, there’s a wildness to his eyes, a million moons razed, sun-sunken in the blinks of his eyes; human, but not. _“Friend?”_ A foreign concept.

“A friend,” Ashe repeats, watching the way Yuri’s eyes seem to pulse, his form turning into an untamable fire, so indecipherable - or, no, maybe he doesn’t _want_ to decipher it - that Ashe forces his eyes shut, hears the wind twist and crack like bones reforming and sigh into pitched relief. Then silence. When he opens his eyes, it’s just Yuri again, but something’s changed, clear in the way he relaxes where Ashe hadn’t noticed he was tense before, shoulders loosening as he reaches and lights another cigarette with a purple fire lit at the tip of his finger.

“A friend,” Yuri says, and the idea of it makes his narrowed eyes gleam velvet. “Company. That is what a friend is, right, sparrow?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll continue keeping me company. As a friend?”

“Of course.” Uncertain at the sudden change and the strange phenomenon a few moments before, Ashe adds, “If you want.”

“Hmm. Want,” Yuri hums with an air of detachment, eyes sliding from Ashe to the wall. Another drag from his cigarette. “Youーwell, you look like you’d be fun to keep around.”

“So that’s a yes?” At Yuri’s amused, appraising look, Ashe takes it as so. He takes off his backpack and brings it round into his lap, opening it up. “So the other day, you said you were interested in this series...”

  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Ashe would like to know how other demons act, but he’s never met any other than Yuri, and he’s never heard of any other rumours similar to Yuri’s when he first followed the trail. He doesn’t know if they all look the way he does, on the edge of a shadow, or talk with their hands fluttering like birds unable to perch. The first time Yuri laughs without any mean spirit he himself looks surprised at the sound that bursts out, how free and genuine it is, and extinguishes it quickly with a thoughtful frown.

Yuri has a curiosity about humanity that Ashe allows him to indulge in, as much as he can with Yuri living in a tunnel; a portable radio that, when turned on, only played white noise; nail polish that matches the colour of the first pair of socks Ashe had given him; books Ashe let him borrow.

“Why haven’t you left the tunnel, by the way?” Ashe brings himself to ask once.

Yuri’s hands hover over his pile of cards; he pauses in flipping the deck. The cards in the centre stay face up, the topmost card a ten of spades. “Why not? It’s cozy in here, don’t you think?”

Ashe squints at the surrounding darkness encroaching on Ashe’s lit flashlight, concrete digging into his legs, the unnatural cold of the tunnel and how the feel of it lingers after he leaves. “Sure.”

Yuri laughs. “I was joking, sparrow.” Was he, though? “To be honest, I can’t remember anymore what I’m here for. I was sleeping for a long time.”

“Don’t you want to go outside, then?”

“Why?”

_“Why?”_

“Why would I want to go outside? There’s too much outside. No,” Yuri shakes his head, “best to just stay here, where no one can find me.”

“I found you.”

“I mean, _people_. Devils dressed as humans, liars and people who are cruel for the sake of being cruel. I’ve had my fill of humanity. Besides, it’s safer for everyone if I stay here.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You know.” Yuri’s eyes glaze over, and even though he’s still, the shadows behind them grow, turn grotesque and brittle and hulking. “Better a sword left to rust away than a sword used to kill.”

Yuri returns to their game of Slapjack, flicking cards over one by one into the pile, but Ashe doesn’t; he stares like that’ll give Yuri’s thoughts away, secrets stowed and hidden behind shuttered eyes.

“Yuri?”

“Hm?”

“The first time I asked for a favour, what did you think I would ask for?” There’s no answer. Ashe presses gently, “Yuri?”

Yuri slaps the deck in the centre, a jack of hearts peeking between his fingers. The deck is added to his own, carefully organizing his pile and shuffling his deck. “Might want to focus on the game more, sparrow,” he says lightly, “or you’re gonna lose.”

Ashe’s own pile of cards is measly compared to Yuri’s; he’s already losing.

He recalls what Yuri told him at the beginning vaguely, about blood-stained hands and razing nations. Looking at Yuri, he doesn’t see the powerful being he makes himself out to be but someone, just like anyone else, exhausted and ruined by life and has taken to watching it pass by with blank eyes. Demons, Ashe finds, aren’t quite the image he’s brought them up to be.

Yuri flips over a card, ignoring Ashe’s gaze.

No, they’re just as lonely as everyone else.

_Company._ That’s all Yuri asked of Ashe.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Oh hello, little one, aren’t you a fine specimen...Yuri, look at this,” Ashe calls, brushing open the entrance of the cave, fresh with the scent of spring, sunlight cleaving through to reveal a figure a few feet away hidden under multiple blankets and pillows.

“Mmh.”

“Yuri, look.” Ashe waits for Yuri’s head to pop out of the blankets before shoving his arm into his face. Yuri goes cross-eyes, leaning back to focus on the small creature on Ashe’s sleeve.

“Whatー?”

“It’s a snail! Isn’t it cute? I found it outside by one of the leaves. Here you go, little one.” Ashe deposits the snail on the ground by Yuri’s makeshift bed, where Yuri can watch it slowly inch its way around the bed.

Enamoured as Ashe is by the little traveller, Yuri spares only a few more seconds before slipping back into the blankets with a small grumble. Ashe takes a seat on the furthermost edge of the blankets, content to let him sleep a while longer.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Did anyone come close, at least?”

“To what?”

“What the afterlife would be like.”

“It’s really not as interesting as you all make it out to be.” _You all_ as in humanity.

“You only say that because you know.” Leaning back on his hand, Ashe marks the page of the book open on one knee with a finger to glance up at Yuri. “Will you give me a clue, at least? Is it like heaven and hell, or reincarnation, or something else?”

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” Yuri sighs and shrugs. “Yes. No. Does it matter?”

“I...think so? Since we’re going to be stuck in whatever afterlife once we die.”

Flicking ash off his hands, Yuri takes a drag from his cigarette. “It’s really boring. It’s why I left, the boredom. It’s like standing around in an empty airport at baggage claim waiting for your suitcase, but it never arrives. That’s the afterlife waiting for humanity. But, who am I to say for sure? I haven’t visited in a long time. Maybe they’ve changed their policies recently.”

“I’ve never been to an airport before.” The closest he’s experienced it was from movies.

“No.”

“I’ve never had to leave the country.” Or had the money, or wanted to; everyone Ashe loved was right here.

“You’ll be tired of it if you spend every day there.”

Ashe hums. The monotony of it isn’t something he can imagine right now. “Could be worse.” He was imagining hellfire and the whole shebang.

“Could be better,” Yuri shrugs. “You win some, you lose some. Was there anything else you were wondering about that you wanna ask now, while I’m in the mood?”

“Uh...sure.” Ashe searches for one of the many questions he has that have suddenly fled his mind, his eyes landing on the copy of _Good Omens_ he lent Yuri. “If angels exist, what do they look like?”

Yuri’s mouth twists into a frown. “They exist, but they don’t look like how most of the paintings and scriptures depict them. Sometimes their original form looks more terrifying than us, though we share similarities.”

“What do they look like?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” Yuri waves the hand with the cigarette stuck between two fingers. “Creepy eldritch horrors, incomprehensible to the human mind to the point of mentally breaking anyone who sees them.”

“The usual,” Ashe echoes the casualness of it and gulps. “Are there some on earth as well, the same as you?”

“Probably, though I haven’t encountered any recently given...” He gestures widely around them. “...my current situation. And they’re not exactly good company for a demon, but they’re easy enough to avoid.”

“Really?”

“Their presence is a beacon of light big enough to cover entire towns.”

“Like really big fireflies?”

“Like really big...fireflies.” Yuri’s mouth twitches at Ashe’s poor comparison. “Now, if only their lifespans were as short as one.”

Ashe snorts at the morbid wish. “If demons do bargains with humans, what do angels do?”

“Observe.”

“Humanity?” Yuri nods. “They don’t try and stop you?”

“That’s not what they’re here for. Their existence is more of a warning if anything.”

“Are you going to elaborate on that,” Ashe says when Yuri stops talking.

Yuri considers it for a moment, says, “Nah,” and returns to the book in his lap.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Rain pours scalding hot, loud enough that Ashe can’t hear anything over the burning hiss of it. Still he urges himself onward, upward, desperately, pedals until his legs burn, climbing past forest rangers and the occasional headlights of a speeding car, fighting water and gravity at once.

Without stopping he bursts into the cave, stray leaves clinging to him, his bike clicking to a stop as he staggers down, collapses at Yuri’s bedside, hands reaching for a peaceful form. Dimly he registers his bike crashing to the ground, but that’s unimportant as he rasps, “Yuri.”

No response but a shift under the covers. Yuri is slow to wake as always, but the sight of Ashe unravelling on the ground has his gaze sharpening into wakefulness in seconds. “Sparrow?”

“Yuri,” Ashe says, his world splintering before his eyes, “I need to make a bargain.”

Other than the two he made when they first met, Ashe has never requested another, had no need to as the months passed. It’s been almost two years since Ashe first met him, and it’s now he enacts upon a third bargain.

“What’s the emergency?”

“Please,” Ashe whispers. In his mind he’s back in the hospital room, the weak beep of the machine and a small, feeble hand is clutched by his sister. “Please save my brother. There was an accident, at the side of the road, a drunk driverー” he flounders for words, piling up behind his tongueー “Please, Yuri, can you save him? He’sーI can’tーI can’t let someone else I love die.” He knows this request is greedy; no one can stop death. But if there’s anything Ashe wants, it’s for none of his family to die like this.

As difficult as it is to read Yuri, Ashe sees the resignation and determination that sets into his eyes, the way he straightens up decisively. “It’ll cost you.”

“Anything,” Ashe practically sobs with relief, “as long as he lives, I’m fine with that.”

“A life is a lot,” Yuri says carefully. “There’s not much that can be exchanged for it except for another life.

“Your life in exchange for his own.”

And Ashe knows this is a terrible idea, that this is where all the stories and life lessons come from, making deals with fairies or witches, but he agrees to it anyway, says, “That’s fine” without hesitation, because at least that means his brother will live.

All Yuri says, in return, is “Okay,” then, when nothing happens, “You’re not waiting for my approval, are you? Go and visit him” in a tone so commanding Ashe scrambles to obey, hauls up his bike and rushes out into the rain again, barely able to form a thought.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It takes three days for Ashe to visit Yuri again. Three days of pacing restlessly up and down blank hallways that smelled of death, panicked relief by Allen’s bedside as he grasped his brother’s hand because _he’s not dead he’s not dead he’s not dead like them,_ time spent with his brother until he finally forced Ashe out of the hospital with the insistence to return to normal life, no need to worry about him, he was doing just fine without his _hovering._

“How was he?” is what Yuri asks him.

“Fine. Better, much better. The doctors called it a miraculous recovery, that by the end of the month he would be able to return to college.” Ashe takes a reluctant seat across from Yuri, does his best to smile. “So...how does this work?”

“What?”

Ashe gulps, the sound stuck in his throat, trying to ignore the feeling of an internal ticking time bomb. “I mean, are you going to take my life now or will I be able to warn everyone beforehand? I didn’t really prepare for this...I should have, shouldn’t I?” Ashe chuckles nervously. “I was hoping to say goodbye to everyone and have everything done first...” Byleth’s going to need to hire another English teacher. Someone needs to find Katya and feed her...hopefully Ashe’s neighbours will hear her complaining and find her.

Chewing on the end of the cigarette without taking a drag, Yuri doesn’t reply. Sighing, he switches the cigarette to his fingers, fiddling as Ashe tries not to shift too much, the back of his shirt sticking to his sweat from the ride over.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” he says finally. “Your life is mine to claim. When you die, your soul is mine.” He nods, decision made, and finally takes a drag from his cigarette.

Bewildered, Ashe asks, “...Is that it?”

“It’s enough, isn’t it?”

“So...wait, you’re just going to let me go?”

Yuri arches a brow. “That’s not what I said, is it? We’re bound together now whether you like it or not, sparrow.”

Though his life isn’t his own anymore, Ashe doesn’t have it in him to be concerned. “Bound together, huh?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Ashe shakes his head. “It just sounds a little too much like an arranged marriage, or something.”

“An arranged marriage,” Yuri repeats emptily. A smirk slashes across his face. “And yet I haven’t even seen the inside of your house.”

“Are you suggesting you want to move in? ...Are you serious?” Ashe surveys Yuri’s face for a crack, giving in to the joke, but Yuri just shrugs carelessly.

“Why not? You’re the one who wanted me to go outside. And if I’m closer to you it should be easier to collect your soul when you pass.”

Ashe brushes away that comment to think about later. “I have an extra room in my apartment that’s usually saved when one of my siblings visit...wait, are we actually doing this?”

“Why not?”

Ashe considers this, raises pros and cons, the costs of living with a roommate. He wipes it away to see Yuri as he is, left alone in a cave for who-knows-how long, tired of bargains, losing more than he ever gained.

“Alright,” he says, stupid-impulsive as the idea is. “Let’s do this.”


	2. deathbound

“You didn’t think this through.”

“How could I, you kind of just _sprung this_ on me...oh, I give up,” Ashe sighs, slumping over his overstuffed backpack after trying for the ninth time to fit the blankets and pillows he’s brought over the months into the backpack. It’s been ten minutes of Ashe attempting to stuff everything inside and Yuri giggling at his helplessness. “Yuri, _help_.”

“What can I do?” Yuri laughs, bending down to his level, sticking his cigarette into his mouth to free his hands.

“I don’t knowーsomething.” Ashe pulls back and sighs at the mess. “I guess I can just come back again to collect the rest.”

A pensive look comes upon Yuri’s face; he brushes away Ashe’s hands to take the blankets and pillows out of the backpack, shoving them into a shadow one the ground that ripples like water. “Does that work?”

“Iー” Ashe stares at the ground, backpack now able to accommodate for the pillows. “Why couldn’t you do that before?”

“Sorry, sparrow, watching you struggle was too adorable. Now, how am _I_ going to fit on this bike?”

Hefting said bike up, Ashe says slowly, “There’s no seat or extra place in the back for you to sit...” Yuri could take the bike and Ashe could walk home, but that would require Yuri to know where Ashe lives.

Yuri sighs. “Nevermind, sparrow. Let’s just go out.”

The afternoon sun glowers down at them as they emerge; Ashe shields his eyes from it, places a cap on his head. Beside him, Yuri seems to shrink back at the light, hiding in Ashe’s shadow.

“It’s been too damn long,” he mutters. “Ah, well, I guess I’ll have to get used to this, don’t I? Not right now, though.”

“Whatー?” Ashe steps back in confusion as Yuri’s form unravels itself like a ribbon, strands of darkness splitting and sinking into Ashe’s shadow. A smile splits open where Ashe’s face should be in the shadow, two purple eyes blinking open.

“Much better,” Yuri purrs.

“Oh,” Ashe says. Pauses. “Well, that’s one way of doing it.”

Ashe has visited Yuri enough times to know the way home by heart, map inked across his skin and sunken into his veins. Past rural homes, fields of gold and outpouring streams just on the outskirts of the city, the sky above a whirl of blue. Beside him on the tarmac, Ashe’s shadow shifts into shapeless, unnameable things; Yuri takes in his surroundings, too, the ease of it, as Ashe continues on.

The train station is empty when they arrive; so, too, is the train when it arrives, something Ashe is grateful for as he wheels in his bike and takes a seat by the windows. Yuri stays, pooled into the shadows of his feet as Ashe digs through his backpack to find a book, but Yuri rises, still shadow, along the wall of the train to peer discreetly over Ashe’s shoulder.

Their first tell that they’ve returned to the city is the rumble of noise, city traffic trailing out into further streets. Buildings extend to blue skies, windows gleam; they pass a large billboard advertising a movie, a suited character walking away, backlit by an explosion. Ashe recognizes the movie, if only because Claude Riegan’s starring in it.

“Oh, wow,” Yuri says, turned away from the book to glue himself to the window, staring down at the streets. “Humans have been _busy._ I mean, I knew they were, but seeing it for myself...maybe I should’ve woken earlier.”

“I don’t think you missed much.”

Ashe’s apartment is located near the elevated railway on the ninth floor. The closeness of the railway to the apartment due to poor city planning makes the rent cheaper than most because of the daily disturbances, despite the fact that Ashe’s building is located in the heart of the city.

“Oh wow, furniture” is the first thing Yuri says when they enter the apartment, splitting himself off from Ashe’s shadow and slinking inside after taking off his shoes. “I didn’t expect that from you.”

Ashe toes off his shoes, parks his bike in the front hall, and follows Yuri inside, making note of each change he’ll need to make as he goes - empty out his shoe rack for Yuri, the closet should be fine since Ashe doesn’t own many coats - and finds Yuri staring at the split between the kitchen and the living room, finely furnished, long lived in. “You didn’t expect my apartment to have furniture?”

“I didn’t think you had your life together considering you’re a young adult who considers going to haunted tunnels a reasonable pastime.”

“It’s not haunted anymore,” Ashe reminds him.

“No, but now your apartment is.” Heading to the kitchen first, Yuri contents himself with opening and closing drawers filled with cutlery and kitchen appliances, peering into the almost-empty fridge with a bright-eyed curiosity. Ashe supposes anything must be interesting to a demon who’s been sleeping for centuries.

A familiar meow draws Ashe to the living room, gently picking up Katya and scratching her head as greeting. Yuri drifts over to his side of the room, giving Ashe a careful berth to stand in front of the large bookshelf by the television that’s been nailed to the wall. With a careful hand, he trails the spine of one. “Your childhood favourites?”

Ashe leans over to see what he’s pointing at: _The Series of Unfortunate Events._ “Oh, yes. You can read that, if you’d like. Do you want me to show you your room now?”

They stop by the washroom on the way there, located in the middle of the other hall; Ashe is going to need to go on a trip to the grocery to stock up on supplies, now that he has a roommate.

The room for Yuri is a bland guest room at the end of the hall beside Ashe’s own bedroom without any personal touches added to it. Yuri glances into it, opens the empty closet, peers under the bed.

“And that’s the whole apartment,” Ashe finishes, “other than my bedroom. Is it...is the room okay with you?”

Yuri raises a brow. “You saw me living in a tunnel without electricity and you’re asking me if _this_ is okay?”

“That just means your standards are lower than most. Tell me if anything bothers you.

“By the way,” Ashe adds later as they’re placing the blankets and pillow covers that had been with Yuri in the tunnel into the laundry basket, “I know we both agreed to you moving in, but you still need to find a job to pay rent.” Ashe doesn’t care about the split, but he needs to contribute a little, because Ashe can’t handle paying for two people alone.

“Don’t worry, sparrow, I wasn’t planning on doing nothing all day.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean you can suddenly find a job without any credentials.” Ashe stands up from the couch. “I have a friend who I can ask if they have any free positions at the restaurant he owns, I’m working there part-time over the summer, too.”

“It’s fine, sparrow,” Yuri says. “I’ll find a job on my own.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Ashe is skeptical of that, but if Yuri insists then he won’t push the matter.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Yuri doesn’t emerge from his room the day after. Under the idea that he’s still trying to settle into the apartment, Ashe leaves him be, doing what he normally does with the first month of summer; sleeping in, reading whichever book he wasn’t able to during the school year. In the afternoon, he travels to Dedue’s restaurant, close enough to walk under the shade of trees and dodging sunlight, and on weekends he volunteers to work at the homeless shelter.

The next day, Ashe tentatively knocks on Yuri’s door. “Yuri?” When no response arrives, he opens the door slowly to reveal an eerily empty room. The covers are made, tucked so neatly into the corners that they look like the bed was never used. The sheets are clean.

Ashe does a spin in the centre of the room and doesn’t find any changes. “Yuri?”

A cold hand clamps around his ankle. “Boo.”

Ashe screams. Yuri bursts out laughing and comes crawling out from under the bed likeーa demon. Right.

Ashe places a hand over his heart, feeling the race of it and reassuring himself that he’s still alive. “What...”

Yuri snickers. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“What were you doing under the bed?”

“It’s more comfortable to sleep in the dark. Did you need something?”

Scrambled, he tries to remember why he was here in the first place. “I haven’t seen you leave this room since we arrived.”

Yuri shrugs. “I’ve been in and out.”

“Have you been using your key?”

“What key?”

“The apartment’s key. It’s hooked up at the front foyer.” He has one more copy of the original; Christophe has one, and Eleana the other. At the blank look he receives, Ashe says, “You can use the door, you know.”

“I’ll consider it for next time.” Yuri takes a seat on the bed, wrinkling the sheets. “Is that all?”

“No,” Ashe says. “I wanted to ask if you were free to go shopping with me?”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“How long is this trip supposed to take, anyway? Ten years?”

“I’m not sure how that’s the number you came up with, but...no.” Ashe sends a concerned look his way as Yuri emerges from the change room in a loose black shirt and fitted, artfully ripped jeans. “I don’t care how long this takes, but less than ten years would be nice.”

Yuri laughs, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll hold you to that, sparrow. What do you say about this? Looks good?” He does a small spin for him which makes Ashe smile.

“It looks good! Tell me when you’re done and I’ll pay for it, okay?”

“Sure, sure.” Yuri disappears back into the change room, but his voice still carries: “But make no mistake, I’ll pay you back for this later.”

“You say that like it’s a threat.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Well,” Ashe says, amused, “I’m looking forward to it.”

“I don’t see why I can’t just share your clothes,” Yuri says. “We’re about the same size, after all.”

“I doubt I have enough clothes for you or that my clothes will suit whatever your style is. Besides that, I want you to have something for yourself.”

On the other side, Yuri hums thoughtfully. “Something for myself.”

“To fill the closet in your room.”

It’s a while of Ashe scrolling through his phone outside the change room while Yuri wanders the store, picking out clothes and seeking Ashe’s approval for who-knows-what reason, Yuri should know himself that he looks good in whatever he wears. This is unfortunate in that he left the apartment today wearing Ashe’s college hoodie and loose sweats, but Ashe refuses to let this bother him since he was the one who insisted Yuri wear clothes that were actually made of fabric and not whatever he had before in the tunnel that became apparent under the sunlight was clearly not fabric.

“We could just steal these, you know,” Yuri says conversationally as he emerges once more from the change room in a purple crop top and cuffed jeans.

“I’m going to pay for them.”

“Why? It’d be so easy, sparrow, with me around.”

But Ashe is stubborn, and Yuri eventually rolls his eyes and sighs and says “Your loss” but goes back into the change room without much of a fight.

Their purchases made, they emerge from the store, bogged down by extra baggage as Ashe leads them to a different portion of the mall to go grocery shopping. Yuri disappears while Ashe consults the grocery list on his phone and methodically goes through what he needs to buy this week, returning with extra purchases like shampoo and other hygiene products and snacks.

“...One Pocky pack.”

Ashe shrugs and lets Yuri drop it into the cart.

“... _Two_ Pocky packs.”

“I don’t know why you’re acting like I’ll say no,” Ashe says. “As long as you eat it, it’s fine.”

Yuri’s eyes glimmer with something unsaid; Ashe doesn’t understand what it is, but Yuri turns away before Ashe thinks anything of it.

“...Did you have any ideas about how we were going to carry this to the train?” Yuri asks thirty minutes later, all their bags with their purchases stuffed into the shopping cart, just outside the mall in a slice of shadow, hidden away by other people.

Ashe winces and chuckles nervously. “I was thinking we could...”

Whatever Ashe’s face looks like, it makes Yuri smirk. “Yes?”

“If you could maybe use your power to carry everything...please? It’d make it a lot easier for both of us.”

Yuri’s slow to comply, a fake snub of “And yet, you wouldn’t let me do this with the clothes.”

“That would’ve been stealing, Yuri.”

“More like saving money. I thought humans cared about money,” he grumbles, but what’s done is done, bags sunken into shadows, and when they take the busy train back to the apartment, they’re empty-handed.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Yuri’s not a bad roommate. This somewhat has to do with how little Ashe sees of him around the apartment, always flitting in and out, searching for a job as he said he would. Of what Ashe does see of him is when Yuri’s in the kitchen or living room tapping away on the phone Ashe bought him, muttering about the “wonders of the internet” and so on, which Ashe maybe should have expected given how long Yuri’s been asleep - he _did_ spend a concerned amount of time looking around the mall when they first arrived, eyes lingering on large banners and television screens, music playing from overhead speakers. Yuri keeps to himself, for the most part, making him the world’s quietest, least bothersome roommate. It’s not a bad thing, but Ashe has been slowly coaxing himself to talk to him more. It’s different from when they were in the tunnel, back when they could play games or read or just talk and not have to worry about anything else, and they both weren’t busy.

Still, Ashe isn’t expecting to return to the apartment after a lunch out with Caspar and Annette one day to find Yuri glued to a corner of the ceiling in the living room, form bristling, jagged edges rippling as he stares down Ashe’s cat, who is also bristling and hissing at him, but from her cat tower.

“...I’m home,” Ashe says, approaching them. “What’s this about?”

Yuri jerks his head to him like he’s just noticed his appearance before refocusing on Katya. “Your cat hates me.”

“I could guess that much, but that doesn’t explain why you’re on the ceiling?”

“She can’t reach me here.”

Ashe allows himself a second to consider the absurdity of the situation - his cat disliking the demon he’d invited into his house as a roommate after making a deal with him to take his soul when he died, the fact that this is apparently Ashe’s life now and he is apparently already used to it - before scooping up Katya into his arms. “I’ll put her in my room for now, but you two are going to have to reconcile at some point.”

“Only if she’s nice about it,” Yuri mutters, finally clambering down from the ceiling corner.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


With summer reaching its peak, Ashe’s siblings are free to visit his apartment. As always, they come bearing gifts - gifts as in any ingredients they’ll be using to cook food today.

Eleana bursts into his apartment at 11am with no grace, Ashe’s brothers on her heels piling into the tiny front foyer, and declares, when she sees Ashe in the kitchen about to prepare his lunch, “Outta the way, we’re using the kitchen today.”

Immediately Ashe asks, “Can I helpー”

“Nope! Go read in the living room or something.”

Ashe follows them into the kitchen anyway, not ready to let this go. “Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“I can handle it.” Behind her, Allen rolls his eyes and mockingly air-quotes her, hands laden with groceries.

“Bet,” Christophe says. “You’re going in the living room, too, _I’ll_ do this.”

“I can do it!” Eleana insists.

Christophe squints at her while Ashe gives up and finally settles in the living room, grabbing a book at random stacked on top of the precariously high pile of books on the low wooden table. “You sure?”

“It won’t be like last time.”

“Riiiight,” Christophe drawls, and without looking says, “Allen, you’re cutting the vegetables today.”

Allen, trying to creep into the living room and escape the disaster sure to occur with Eleana in the kitchen, says, “Fuck.”

“Language.”

“I’m an adult!”

“Eleana, help me with the chicken and noodles.”

“But I want the knifeー” She quiets at the look Christophe shoots her way, but behind his back sends a middle finger to Allen. Allen sticks his tongue out in retaliation as Ashe watches in amusement.

“Really, I don’t mind helpingー”

“You’re not doing anything today,” Christophe tells him. “Let us baby you for once.”

“Alright,” he acquiesces, a smile on his face. He returns to his book - Agatha Christie’s _Cards on the Table_ \- while his siblings bicker in the kitchen. No one stops Allen when he connects to Ashe’s Bluetooth speaker and starts blasting music, though Ashe is expecting a noise complaint later from the neighbours, and decides to save some food for them as an apology.

In no time at all they’re setting the table, maneuvering seats and plates in a dance long practiced. Ashe is about to sit with the others when a cabinet slams open behind him.

“Sparrow, you’re not gonna believe thisー”

Ashe turns to find a long, pale arm emerging from one of the cupboards, Yuri’s head popping out to freeze at the sight of them at the table, having never gotten over his habit of popping out of dark places. Ashe doesn’t hear anything behind him other than the rumble of a train starting up; maybe his siblings went into shock.

“I told you to use the front door,” he says, exasperated.

Yuri releases a burst of laughter that’s too high-pitched to sound like a true laugh. It might be one of the handful of times Ashe has caught him off guard. “What are you talking about? I don’t know you, this is the wrong apartment, my apologiesー” Yuri ducks back into the cabinet and slams it closed.

“Yuri! Get back here!” Ashe calls him from his phone, but there’s no reply; he trips over the shoes gathered in the front foyer as he rushes out of the apartment to find Yuri standing outside with an embarrassed air about him that wasn’t there before. He jumps at the sight of Ashe like he wasn’t expecting him. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Inside. I need to introduce you properly to my siblings.”

Yuri tilts his head and says, slowly, “Are you sure about that? If you act like you don’t know me, we can avoid any awkwardness inside.”

“It’ll be fine. They’re used to my weird friends.” Yuri doesn’t budge at this, so Ashe tries, “Yuri, one of my closest friends once drank a whole cup of paint without noticing what it was. I promise, you entering through the cupboard isn’t the weirdest thing they’ve seen.”

Yuri snorts. “You surround yourself with strange people regularly?”

Ashe smiles. “It’s a talent of mine.”

Inside the apartment, Christophe is knocking on the back wall of the cupboard Yuri had entered through; he spots the two of them. “Oh, hey. How did you do that? There’s no false wall at the back of this cupboard.”

The noise of the travelling train echoes throughout the apartment as it passes, making music of the plates and cups Eleana and Allen tab down to keep from falling off the table, long used to this dance. Yuri shrugs as the noise fades, spreads his hands like a magician proving that he’s empty-handed and says, “Magic.”

Christophe nods, easily accepting. “Fine then, keep your secrets. Ashe, this is your roommate, isn’t it?”

“Ohh,” Eleana makes a knowing noise. “No wonder you didn’t tell us about him.”

“What does that mean?”

Eleana nods in Yuri’s direction. “He’s hot.”

Ready to both apologize and combust at her straightforwardness, Ashe turns to Yuri, flustered, but Yuri only smirks. “You’re not so bad looking yourself.”

Ashe says weakly, “Please don’t flirt with my sister.”

“That just took ten years off my lifespan,” Allen deadpans. “And also my appetite. Give me five minutes.”

“Where’s he going?” Yuri inquires as Allen leaves the table.

“Going to cuddle Katya,” Eleana replies. “I’m surprised he didn’t do it sooner, that’s usually the first thing he does the moment we get here. Wanna take his seat?”

Yuri immediately tries to back out graciously. “Oh, I couldn’t intrude on a family gatheringー”

“It’s not that deep, dude,” Christophe says. “It’d be kinda rude too if we knew you were here but didn’t offer you food, ya know?”

Subtly, Ashe nudges Yuri’s shoulder and takes a chance, grinning at Yuri’s pensive frown. “I’ll get an extra chair for you.”

Yuri gives in with a sigh and a shrug. “Alright, sparrow.”

Ashe fetches him one of the extra chairs in the living room that’s used to hold Ashe’s various piles of books and tucks himself into the table. “What was it you were gonna tell me when you came in?” On the other side of the table, Eleana mouths _sparrow?_ while Ashe waves his hand away.

“Oh. I got a job.”

Ashe slips while trying to scoop up some noodles at the bluntness. “You did?! Congratulations! Where are you working?”

“I have no idea,” Yuri says serenely. “I asked some lady while she was beating up some purse snatchers and she hired me on the spot.”

“Oh.” Ashe frowns. “Did you get her number, at least?”

“Yeah. I start work tomorrow, the night shift.”

“That’s good news.”

“Are we...going to ignore the purse-snatching part?” Eleana asks, looking between the two like they both announced they were running for president, or maybe eloping together.

“It’s not all that interesting,” Yuri says flippantly while digging into his noodles; Ashe leaves him be.

Allen returns eventually while Eleana is regaling them about her latest mishaps during practice. Yuri stays quiet throughout lunch, observing everyone in turn and answering any questions directed his way, though there aren’t many; he seems content to listen and eat, and no one seems bothered with him there, all the siblings used to making up for the quiet he doesn’t fill in.

They gather in the living room later, at first to play Smash Bros., but then they realize Yuri’s never played, and Allen volunteers himself to teach him the basics with Kirby while Christophe and Eleana duke it out as respectfully as possible on the other side of the map. This somehow transitions to them playing Mario Kart, where the siblings wordlessly decide to play Rainbow Road first - “Following tradition” is what Christophe says with a wink - which ends up with Yuri in tenth place while Eleana speeds off the road into the abyss repeatedly in twelfth with colourful cursing. Ashe is content with a steady eighth place while Christophe and Allen one-up each other in the top two spots. As they continue on with more races, Yuri improves, road after road, until he’s with the top two fighting for the ranks, even breaks into first in some of them.

“It was nice to meet you, Yuri,” Christophe says at the front foyer, the two younger siblings toeing on their shoes. With the dorms closed over the summer, they’ll be driven to Lonato’s by Christophe. “If you need any help with something, you can give us a call. If Ashe is being a handful, you can call then too and I’ll knock some sense into him.”

“Ashe is never a bother,” Yuri says, and Ashe’s heart jumps a little; it’s the first time Yuri’s used his name instead of his usual nickname. “If anything, I’m the handful he has to live with.”

Ashe smiles. “Lucky for him, I have two hands.”

Strangely, as Ashe says this, Eleana turns to Allen and gags while Allen rolls his eyes; Ashe makes silent note of it, though he doesn’t know what it means.

The door closes quietly behind them, their footsteps and voices disappearing further down the corridor; Ashe sends a careful smile Yuri’s way. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“They’re certainly a loud bunch,” Yuri remarks, but it’s said in jest, a small, pleased smile on his own face. “But they’re not bad. Not at all. I can see why you’d be willing to exchange your life for theirs.”

It sounds like he wouldn’t be bothered if they stopped by again.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


August breezes in with all-time highs that make the air feel like steam on skin, AC in the apartment turned up in an effort to combat the heat. Ashe starts preparing for the school year, wakes up early in the mornings, closer to the time he would wake during the school year, monopolizing the living room to plan his curriculum and reading up on new material, his work scattered around him.

Yuri finds him on one such afternoon as Ashe is taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, seeing black spots. He pauses on his way to the kitchen to drift toward him. “How long have you been working?”

“I don’t know what time it is,” Ashe says honestly. He blinks up at him as he reaches for his cup of tea, sees Yuri still in his pyjamas in the bright noonday sun. Not that late yet, then. “Work soon?”

“Yeah. Want me to make you dinner?”

“Oh.” Ashe saw Yuri puttering around the kitchen weeks ago and perusing one of the recipe books they have, but he’s never tried any of the food himself. “If that’s alright with you, yes.”

“If it wasn’t alright with me I wouldn’t have asked, sparrow.” Yuri’s tone is light, teasing; Ashe flushes and turns away as Yuri ties his hair up, catching the stray strands with swift motions.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Humming, Yuri agrees. Ashe sets his concentration back on work, but the sounds of Yuri cooking and the _smell_ that wafts in Ashe’s direction has him standing to watch, leaning over the counter, waiting for Yuri to finish. Yuri catches his eye, grins at his presence, and seems to thrive under the attention, cooking with ease and vigour. Recognizing the process, Ashe knows it won’t be long for dinner to be done.

“Did you like the chow mein when my siblings visited?” Ashe asks as he sets the table.

“I’ve been trying to perfect it,” Yuri says, smoothly taking a seat across from him, undoing his ponytail, hair tumbling past his shoulders. “Hopefully this time I got it right.”

“I’m sure it’ll taste perfect even if it tastes different,” Ashe assures him. “But if you needed my help with this before, you could’ve asked.”

“I know. I wanted to surprise you, sparrow.”

“I’m surprised enough. A little flattered, actually,” he admits. “I can’t remember the last time someone other than family cooked something for me.”

They dig in. The chow mein doesn’t taste the exact same as Christophe’s, but there’s an extra flavour in the chicken that gives it a kick and makes Ashe hum in pleasure, tastebuds singing. He manages two helpings of it and decides to pack the rest away for another day while Yuri watches on, waiting for his judgement.

“So? How was it?”

“Good. Really good,” Ashe manages, still trying to chew through his last mouthful, savouring it. “If you kept cooking, I wouldn’t complain.”

Yuri smiles. “Consider it done, sparrow.”

As Ashe is cleaning the plates, he asks, “So, where are you working? You never did tell me.”

“Oh,” Yuri starts, “I forgot to tell you, didn’t I? McDonald’s.”

“The one at the mall we shop at or the one two streets down by the bank?”

“Two streets down.”

“Huh.” The walking distance is about...twenty minutes. Briefly, he tries to picture Yuri in their staff uniform, but it’s difficult; it’s the kind of thing he’d need to see for himself. “Well, you’re free to use my bike if you wanna get there faster, as long as you lock it properly. Do you know how to ride one? I can teach you.”

“I’ve got it,” Yuri says, waving Ashe off easily. “You just focus on your work, sparrow.”

“Okay.” Ashe smiles at him from behind the counter. “Good luck at work.”

“Thanks, sparrow. I’m gonna need it,” Yuri says, and then he leaves to get ready.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It becomes a regular occurrence for Yuri to cook something up for the both of them at least once a day, experimenting with dishes. Ashe sees Yuri more often because Ashe wakes up at noon (when asked whether he got any sleep at this point, Yuri’s only reply was, “Don’t need any at this point, I’ve been sleeping for centuries”). He’ll open up the window in the kitchen in the kitchen to sit by it, silently watching Ashe, the weight of his gaze both heavy and comforting as he smokes a cigarette down to the nub while painting his nails or reading a book until it’s time for him to cook an early dinner.

Two weeks before the start of the school year, Ashe begins taking the morning train to school to begin preparing there as well; cleaning his classroom of any dust that settled while he was gone and redecorating; meeting with teachers throughout the week to catch up on old news; scheduled meetings as the staff begin to prepare for the upcoming semester. Ashe sees Yuri a lot less then, and he knows he’ll see him even less when the year starts, his presence pops up routinely in the lunches Ashe brings of their leftover dinner like little spots of sunlight in a clouded sky, or the nonsense texts Yuri sends like pictures of the sky or a bird on a tree branch ( _That’s you, sparrow_ ) or a co-worker’s mishaps ( _Balthus got his hand stuck in the vending machine again lmfao_ ).

The beginning of the school year proves Ashe right, not seeing Yuri as much what with him working after school in his classroom or weekly with the archery club.

But he stumbles upon Yuri one morning in the kitchen, his back to Ashe, perched by the window again, sitting backward in a chair, the violet smoke of his cigarette curling into the air. Silhouetted by the blue light of dawn, form lax after a night of work, Ashe drinks in the simplicity of his existence as Yuri takes another drag of his cigarette, lighting the curve of his full lips and the sharp cut of his cheekbones, resting his chin on his curled arm.

“Good morning,” Ashe says quietly, not ready to ruin the moment.

Yuri’s eyes glint an eerie purple in the dark like the heart of an amethyst. Ashe stares a moment to remind himself of exchanges made and friendships formed, before switching on the light.

Blinking, Yuri’s eyes adjust; he turns back to face the window with the empty elevated railway and its high rise buildings. The city below is waking slowly, but Ashe can already anticipate the sounds of traffic. “Morning, sparrow. I made you lunch you can preheat in the microwave.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Yuri hums. “I owe you, anyway.”

“What for?”

“Oh, I don’t know, everything?” Yuri spreads his hands wide. “Giving me your soul and allowing me to live with you? Buying me clothes and letting me use the shower? Entrusting me with the keys to your apartment?”

“Well, yeah,” Ashe says, nonplussed, as he moves around the kitchen, “you live here.”

“Only because you let me. Not anyone would be willing to do this or go this far, sparrow.”

“I guess not. That doesn’t stop me, though. Can I be honest?” Ashe sets aside his cereal and bowl. “You reminded me a little of me, when I was younger.”

Yuri squints, a twisted grin on his face, and Ashe knows how it sounds, comparing himself to a demon like Yuri. “Oh? Why don’t you tell me more, now that I’m interested.”

“It’s not a very nice story” is what Ashe says, but he tells him the gist of it anyway, because Yuri asked and Ashe is willing: “Back when my siblings and I were living on the streets, all I ever wanted was a home to live in, somewhere I could sleep safely without worrying about getting attacked. I’m lucky, because that’s what I got. But there are plenty of other people who didn’t get what I have, who have to fight to live every day. I just wanted to help you out.” The smile on his face wobbles as it makes its way, but his hands don’t shake as he grabs the spoon and bowl in one hand, cereal box in the other to head to the table.

“You like picking up strays, don’t you?”

“Do you mean Katya? I found her on the side of the road after she got hit by a car. I’m glad I managed to get her to a vet on time. We only had to amputate one leg, and she lived.” Ashe shrugs. “I just like helping out whenever I can.”

With seemingly no response coming from Yuri anytime soon, Ashe doles out his cereal and milk.

“You’re way too good of a person to be tied with me, sparrow.”

“Where’s that coming from?” Ashe works around a mouthful of cereal. “It’s not like I’m perfect. I’m just doing what anyone else would do in my situation.” Making the best of it, helping anyone he can along the way; not as penance of all he’s done before, but because it’s what he would’ve wanted someone else to offer back then.

Yuri lights another cigarette, exhales out the window, fatigue lining the edges of his body, a soft remorse on his face, much more ancient than his appearance. “Plenty of people wouldn’t use their privilege the way you do.”

“That’s their decision to make. I’m just doing whatever I can in my position.”

“Exactly.” Yuri turns to stare at him, the bright purple of his eyes strange and disconcerting. “That’s what makes you a good person, sparrow.”

The compliment doesn’t sit right; it rolls off Ashe like water on stone. Fiddling with his spoon, he finds himself fascinated by his cereal. “I’m not a good person. I’ve done bad things.”

“So have plenty of other good people.” Yuri shrugs with one shoulder. “You’re trying to make up for it, aren’t you? I think that makes you a good person.”

Ashe doesn’t quite believe him. Yuri must see this doubt on his face, because he faces the window once more while Ashe returns to his breakfast, the conversation dropped for a stifling silence.

By the time he’s about to leave, Ashe isn’t sure where they stand, if it’s possible to get into a fight over something so trivial, but Yuri tells him, “See you at dinner?” like they never had the disagreement in the first place, and Ashe allows himself to breathe easy as he agrees.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


He doesn’t know what time it is, only that his sun is the light coming from the overhead fixture on top of the table and that the dark is pressing in from the outside, windows latched closed to prevent it from intruding any further. Ashe has moulded himself into the chair, pen grip permanent in his hands from grading the latest tests from his freshman class. There’s a restlessness in the air tonight buzzing in his mind, one he used to wane out with bike rides around the city, where he used to do rounds at night so often that the family-owned grocery store that was always open late knew him by name because he bought snacks from there so often, but that was before Yuri, who now takes the bike to work, leaving Ashe to settle for late-night walks.

Out the door, down nine floors, the city’s made of fog tonight, cold enough that Ashe zips his sweater all the way up and shoves his hands into his pockets. At crossroads he remembers to look both ways; the main roads have cars that pass quick and fade back into the fog, their headlights moving like ghost spectres. Most stores and businesses are closed for the night, lights off inside empty stores. Ashe feels like he’s wandering a ghost city until a store appears in the distance with gaudy yellow-and-red, blaring a warning that Ashe ignores to walk in.

“Hey, welcome toーsparrow?” Over the counter, Yuri does a double take. He’s wearing his uniform, Ashe realizes, the blue-and-gray he’s never seen before, other than the times Yuri takes his uniform home to wash. “What are you doing here at one in the morning? If you wanted me, you could’ve just called.”

“Oh,” Ashe mumbles, not realizing the time. He looks around at empty seats, the cold night waiting for him outside. “I was grading papers and lost track of time.”

Yuri’s look of concern throws Ashe off. “Are you okay?” He vaults over the counter easily to hover around Ashe, hesitant to touch but places his hands on his shoulders to wheel him to an unattended corner, out of sight of the entrance. “Hold on a minute.”

He’s gone before Ashe can protest, leaving him to slide into a seat, staring down at his hands as a love song from the early 2010s plays overhead.

“Sorry, decided to get you something.”

“Oh, it’s fine, really,” Ashe protests as Yuri slides a large McFlurry towards him. “Really, it’s okay, Yuri.”

“Just take it,” he says, “You look like you need it.”

Reluctant as he is, Ashe murmurs, “Thanks” and digs in. “I didn’t even know McDonald’s had an ice cream machine that works.”

“It doesn’t. I used my demon powers for it.”

Yuri doesn’t say much after that. He waits for Ashe to finish, watches the door for customers that never arrive, and waves to the woman now working the counter, who Ashe knows from Yuri’s texts is Hapi. “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

Ashe sets aside his impromptu dessert, shrugging awkwardly. “Not really. I just...wandered here by accident.”

“But there _is_ something you’re worried about,” Yuri confirms, taking Ashe’s long silence as an answer. “You don’t have to talk to me, sparrow, but I’m here.”

“Thank you.” Ashe is grateful, he isー “But this isn’t really something I want to bother you with. It’sーyou might laugh, when I tell you.”

“Didn’t I already tell you you’re not a bother? Now, lay it on me. I can take it.”

No doubt about that, though this matter feels trivial compared to Yuri’s entire existence.

His hands were smaller than when it happened, but if Ashe turns them over he thinks he can still see the blood that’s impossible to wash off.

“I killed someone once.”

“Okay.” Yuri accepts it without even a blink. “Was it in self-defence?” Ashe nods. “Do you feel guilty about it?”

Ashe laughs breathlessly. “All the time.” It would be an excuse to call it an accident; what’s done is done, or, no use crying over spilled milk, is what others would say. “It’s the reason I don’t cook much.” Too many recipes requiring cut vegetables or something along those lines so he sticks to pre-prepped store-bought dishes, even if cooking is one of the last things connecting him to his parents. At least then, he won’t have to wield a knife.

“Oh. This is the reason you were so adamant you weren’t a good person, isn’t it?”

“I’m not a good person.”

“Sparrow, you can be a good person while still doing bad things.”

“I know, I know that, it’s justー” If he can do that, what _else_ can he do? How many more people can he kill? Isn’t it selfish of him, to control other people’s lives as he sees fit? He’s already done it more recently with Allen, different as the method was, Allen’s life was irrevocably altered with Ashe’s bargain.

“Sparrow.” Gently, Yuri tugs Ashe’s hands down from his face, leaves them cradled in his. His frustrated frown and furrowed brows makes Ashe feel worse than before. “Geez. You hold more guilt than I have in my entire lifetime, and I’ve killed more than you ever have or will. If your hands are drenched in blood, then I bathe in it.”

“It’s not really right to compare us,” Ashe mutters. “Our lifespans are different.”

“Maybe, but this is what I said is just more proof that you’re a good person, isn’t it? In my opinion, as a demon, the only sin you’ve committed would be making a deal with me. People kill each other all the time; you’re not special.”

To Ashe’s embarrassment, his laugh comes out choked and wet, and he smothers it quickly with a gulp. With a smile, Yuri caresses his hands, and Ashe feels the roughness of the pads of his fingers, the softness of his palms. “You’re way too harsh on yourself, sparrow. Give yourself a break every once in a while, why don’t you?”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You don’t need to apologize for this. But if you ever need a reminder of how good of a person you are, I’ll do it. Again and again.”

Overwhelmed, Ashe squeezes his hands, finds that it doesn’t hold as much of his appreciation in the action as he imagined. “You don’t need to do something like that, Yuri.”

“Don’t get it confused; I want to.” Yuri’s eyes are melted violet in the dull lighting. “I _want_ to tell you how good you are, sparrow. I’d do it even if you didn’t ask.”

For some inexplicable reason, this makes Ashe burn, hands suddenly sweating in Yuri’s. Flustered, he says, “Well, thank you for the offer. I’ll...keep it in mind.”

Yuri squeezes Ashe’s hands one more time. “My shift ends in a few. Do you wanna stay around, or are you gonna walk home alone?”

The ease with how Yuri says _home_ brings a smile to Ashe’s face. “I...I think I’ll wait,” he says, glancing again out the window to the foggy outdoors. “It might be better for us to walk home together.”

“Alright. I’ll see you in a bit.” Withdrawing, Yuri returns to the counter around the corner, leaving him with an empty McFlurry cup and Miley Cyrus’ The Climb playing overhead.

Hours pass in a dazed half-light, with the radio stubbornly stuck on songs from the early 2010s and Ashe scrolling through through his group chat’s latest messages that he missed, checking on his cats in Neko Atsume and peeking over to see the rare customer with brain-dead eyes preparing for the early morning. Ashe can’t deny his fascination with these people and their schedules, wonders what kind of reason they have for waking so early, if their job is on the other side of the city or if they’ve just left their friend’s house and are now making their way home.

“Ready to go, sparrow?”

Ashe starts, head snapping up, slipping off his aching hand. “Hm?”

Yuri laughs lightly. “Give me a second to change out of my uniform, alright?”

“Okay.” Shaking himself out of his sleep, Ashe waits for Yuri by the counter, where Hapi stands idle behind the counter. She looks back at him in boredom.

“Hey! You must be Yuri’s boyfriend!”

The man who joins them to stand beside the woman is a hulking mass of muscle with a devil grin and a strong jaw. Ashe remembers him from Yuri’s texts, as well as the notable picture of his arm stuck in a vending machine - Balthus.

“Yuri’s boyfriend?” Ashe repeats in confusion. Is that how he looked to Yuri’s co-workers?

“Knew it,” Hapi says, elbowing Balthus in the side. “They weren’t dating. Pay up, B.”

“He didn’t say anythingー”

“I’m not,” Ashe cuts in, embarrassed for Yuri’s sake. “Yuri wouldn’t date me.”

“Oh, ew,” Hapi says flatly. “You’re still in the denial stage, too.”

“What are youー”

“Dammit.” Scowling, Balthus shoves several crumpled dollar bills into Hapi’s waiting palm. “And here I thought I’d actually win a bet for once.”

“Whatーwhat made you think Yuri and I were dating?”

Frowning, Hapi counts up the bills, nods to herself, satisfied, and pockets them carefully. To Ashe she says, “You’re the only other person he talks about outside work. Other than that,” she shrugs, “nothing. It was an easy way to make money.”

“Are you saying you did all this just to mess with me?” Balthus asks.

“You’re an easy person to mess with, B.”

He sighs remorsefully, bringing a hand to his head. “That’s the last time I’m making any bets with you.”

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

“ _Whatever_ . By the way, you, uhh kid.” Ashe perks up at Balthus’s gesture. “Your friend’s just a _little_ fried in the head, I think,” Balthus says. “Nothing concerning, just thought you should know. Other than the fact that the ice cream machine only works when he’s around I mean, which, do you have any idea how he does that? Anyway, he got held at sword-point and all he did was turn to me and ask if this was against customer policy?”

“Is it?” Hapi says doubtfully. “To be fair, we’re all a little fried.”

“Yeah, but you can’t deny there’s something off about him sometimes.”

“...Sure,” Hapi shrugs. “I don’t know, he works the night shift in a McDonald’s. That’s fried enough.”

Ashe, still processing what Balthus told him, says, “Someone tried to rob a McDonald’s? With a sword?”

“To be fair, he was drunk and wanted chicken nuggets,” Hapi says. “Luckily for Yuribird, Coco knocked the man out while he was distracted and used his cell to call a friend to pick him up. Sometimes you just have those nights.”

“...Right,” Ashe says reluctantly, doubtful that he would try and rob a McDonald’s when pitch-black drunk. Then again, you never know. Maybe he should try it sometime.

“Sparrow?” Yuri reappears from his trip to the staff room in his regular clothes, throwing a suspicious glance at his co-workers. “Let’s go. Don’t want you to be late for work.”

“Right.” Ashe follows him out the door, waving a goodbye to Balthus while Hapi tonelessly says, “Have a good day.”

The morning fog hasn’t dissipated though it’s no longer dark out, a dim blue shine to the air around them as Yuri wheels the bike out to the side of the road, Ashe falling into place beside him. Making to check the time on his phone, his eyes catch on the date as well, and his eyes stray to Yuri’s in the dull light as the city wakes.

A car whizzes by, its headlights missing them by inches. Ashe asks, “Do you want to visit my parents’ graves with me this weekend?”

Patiently, Ashe waits for Yuri’s response as he tilts his head in thought. “I wouldn’t be a bother?” he finally asks.

Ashe shakes his head vehemently. “Of course not. I usually visit alone these past few years because of scheduling conflicts with the others, but it’d be nice to have someone there with me. And, I can introduce you to them. You don’t have to, of course.”

“I didn’t say anything, did I?” Yuri muses. “Sure. I don’t have a shift on Saturday.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Finding the shadow of the elevated railway above them, Ashe trails the path he knows well, the careful curve and the sloping lines as the beast, for now, sleeps until its schedule and passengers call. “Yuri?”

“Hm?”

“I’m scared of ghosts.”

The whir and click of the bike continues as Yuri keeps walking, throwing a careful glance as Ashe as he continues on, like the railway; forward is the destination.

“More specifically, my parents’ ghosts,” he continues, making sure not to drag his feet or slow them down. “Sometimes it gets to me, what they’d say if they knew everything I’d done.” _And everything I failed to do._

“Some hypotheticals will always be hypotheticals,” Yuri says. “Ghosts don’t exist. You will never meet your parents again, and even if you did, they wouldn’t be disappointed in what you’ve become.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I know you. I’m not saying I know everything about you, but I know everything that matters, and from what I’ve seen, they’ve raised a perfectly fine son who’s made them proud, for the amount of time they had to raise you.”

“That’s not fair,” Ashe protests, “You’re clearly biased because I’m nice to you.”

“You’re nice to everyone,” Yuri rolls his eyes.

“I try to be.” It doesn’t mean he always is.

“Exactly; you try to be. Sometimes effort is enough. You’ll get somewhere with that.”

Shaking his head but unable to contest that logic, Ashe follows Yuri further down the street. Nevermind the fact that he’s running on barely two hours of rest, that he feels like the world ran him over and doubled back for insurance, that the day hasn’t even begun and he still hasn’t finished grading his classes’ papersー

It’s the calmest he’s felt in months.

“By the way, did you know your co-workers were betting whether we were dating?”

“I _knew_ they were up to something,” Yuri says grimly. “Just wait until I see them again at my next shift, I’llー”

Ashe throws his head back and laughs, and as the sun slowly relearns its trajectory into the sky, the fog finally dissipates.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“You bought flowers.”

“That’s what you bring to graves, don’t you? Did I get it wrong?”

“Of course not, but you didn’t have to. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I got them for a discount because the florist was a demon.”

“That’s niceーwhat.”

“Yeah, he was suspiciously polite the whole way through. Not good-looking, but not bad-looking either, just very much a burnt chicken nugget.” Yuri gives Ashe the bouquet, an array of white orchids, blue hydrangeas, purple dahlias, and a few more he can’t identify. “How long is this train ride supposed to be?”

Handling the bouquet carefully in one hand, Ashe says, “Two hours. Was the demonーdo demons normally live so close to humans?”

“It depends.” Yuri shrugs. “I didn’t ask him what he was doing here because he looked like a fucking weirdo, but he seemed harmless.”

Early as it is in the morning on weekends the train is almost empty save for the occasional traveler or group of hungover college students huddled in their corner; Ashe settles in for the ride as Yuri follows his lead beside him, used to their rides from their weekly visits to the grocery.

Ashe’s parents’ grave is located in a communal one in the outskirts of the city, where the skyline buildings shrink to houses and street shops and outcroppings of family-owned businesses. The entirety of the ride there Yuri spends leaning his head on Ashe’s shoulder, following along as he reads _Mask of Shadows,_ the city rushing by them until they arrive.

“Is there anything you want to say to them, or do you want me to introduce you first?” Ashe asks. He sits cross-legged in front of their joint headstones on grassy ground iced over by recent weather, bouquet presented to them.

Yuri stays a respectful distance away. “Think I’ll follow your lead on this one, sparrow.”

“That’s fine.” Returning his attention to the gravestones, Ashe inhales and finds it in him to smile, can dredge up all his memories of them like blowing bubbles into the late afternoon sky. “Hi mom, dad. I missed you.”

It goes like most of his solo visits go; he weaves in and out of topics, from work - his class’s most recent mishap during presentations, the archery club’s progress - to home - Katya’s doing just fine, he’s thinking of getting another cat (at this, Yuri starts and makes to protest, but lets him continue) - as he wanders from one thing to the next that he wanted to tell them, that reminded him of them, like a bakery that opened up his father would enjoy, or how Eleana’s still following her dreams to become an athlete. When Ashe returns to them, it feels like no time passes at all, with how easily he catches them up with his life without them, the ghost of their laughter in his head.

“Mind if I cut in?” Yuri asks.

Ashe shakes his head. “It’s fine. Do you want me to leave?”

“Just for a few minutes.”

“Sure.”

As much as he wonders what Yuri would have to say to Ashe’s parents without him there, he takes care not to eavesdrop, distancing himself to observe a few gravestones marked by time, difficult to read and weathered down by the elements. In the morning light everything is calm, no spooky shadows or moonlight casting off webbed branches; the sky had broken open earlier that morning to rain, and it left everything damp in the aftermath. Ashe checks his phone and eyes Yuri at a distance, sees his mouth moving without knowing what’s being said, a curve of a smile on his lips.

“Are you done?” Ashe asks as Yuri carefully makes his way to him. “Do you wanna leave?”

“I said everything I needed to say.”

“Okay, let’s go then.” Ashe pockets his phone. “I wanna have a late lunch when we get back.” To his parents, he says his goodbyes in the usual ritual, a kiss to two fingers that's placed on their gravestones, a fond, “I’ll see you later,” whether that is in life or in death, and leaves them behind again.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Ashe wakes with his cheek stuck to a pile of papers. Groaning, he lifts his head feebly, finding himself slouched over the low coffee table. Craning his neck to see Yuri silently laughing at him on his chair by the window, Ashe starts, knees hitting the table.

“Oh, the papersーwhat time is it? Don’t laugh at me,” he whines when Yuri laughs harder, shoulders shaking. Ashe tentatively picks up one of his students’ papers that he had accidentally fallen asleep on, relieved to find it dry. “Oh good, I didn’t drool on them. What time is it?”

“A little past five,” Yuri replies, stubbing out his cigarette on an ashtray Ashe doesn’t remember having before. The walls rattle, signalling an oncoming train arriving home, and Yuri shuts the windows, expelling the harsh winter wind and the sound of the train but not the feel of it shaking the furniture as he makes his way to sit beside Ashe, leaning into him to thumb through the papers Ashe was holding. “I’m leaving half past eight. Was there anything you wanted me to make for dinner?”

Thinking, Ashe bounces his knees, stretches out his legs under the table, spinning the pen in his hand. Yuri continues leafing through the essay, though he doesn’t seem to be focused on the words at all, more on the action of it. “Can you help me make lasagna?”

“Of course.” The walls finally taper off into silence, one train having found its resting spot. It’ll start up again in a few minutes, never one to rest for long, but for now Yuri looks to Ashe to give him a smile he wouldn’t have seen on his face a mere two years before, and Ashe blooms under the sight of change.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


**Yuri:** im at your school

**Ashe:** What?? Why? Did i forget something at home?

**Yuri:** where are u, im in the office

  
  
  


Long after school has ended, Ashe finds Yuri seated in the school’s student office, hands in his pockets and smoothly observing the lack of people. His presence sticks out in the school’s awful lighting like a rose growing out of concrete with the way the very atmosphere changes around him.

“Yuri? Did you need something?”

“Can’t I just see you whenever I want?” Yuri teases, rising up to meet him halfway. “I was curious, in a way, to see your workplace since you’ve already seen mine.”

“Oh.” That’s fair, if a bit unexpected. The unplanned visit Ashe had made was so long ago that it’s faded into the backdrop of his memory in favour of more recent things, like his latest lesson plans and the next book his classes will be studying. “It’s not anything special, but I can show you my classroom. There’s not a lot of people here at the moment...” Yuri follows him out, trailing off to peek into the gym, the sound of sneakers squeaking on the floor and music.

“The volleyball club has the gym today,” Ashe notes, doubling back to his side.

“Looks like it could be fun,” Yuri murmurs, and the two continue on when he’s done observing the team’s exercises.

“It _is_ fun, but it requires a lot of people. I play a bit over the summer, usually because that’s the only time we can gather enough people when our schedules are more flexible. You should join us next time.”

They run into Felix on the way up to Ashe’s classroom, bundled up to fight the cold and about to head home.

“Felix,” Ashe says with a passing smile, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Felix looks too tired to snap at him with something witty and nods curtly. He freezes at the sight of Yuri, standing behind Ashe.

Thinking to introduce them, Ashe says, “This is the roommate I told you about in September? Not sure if you remember, but Yuri, this is Felix. He teaches Phys Ed.”

Instead of saying anything Ashe can expect, Yuri says, “You’re the sword dude.”

Felix glowers at him. “And you were the cashier at McDonald’s.”

_Haha, what?_ is the only thing that goes through Ashe’s head. What comes out is the realization of, “Oh, Felix, were you the one who tried to rob the McDonald’s Yuri works at for chicken nuggets?”

Felix’s glare shifts to Ashe, notched up by several degrees at the mention of the incident. Ashe smiles back as politely as possible as Felix jerks his head violently, shoves his face into his scarf and bodily turns away from them, stomping away without a goodbye.

“Tell me if you like the book I recommended you!” Ashe calls behind him. “See you tomorrow.” He sighs, turning around to continue to his classroom. “I should’ve expected that he was the one who tried to rob you. Person with sword and person with a sword collection, how did I not connect the dots? Sorry for his general attitude,” Ashe adds to Yuri, “he was probably too embarrassed to apologize there, but I’m sure he regrets whatever his drunken self did.”

Yuri sends him an amused smile. “It was good entertainment for that night. It’s not like he was very threatening with how he stumbled into the door trying to enter and how he saidー” at this, he imitates Felix’s flat, voice, slurred by drunkenness “ー‘Nuggets. Now. Hand them over,’ anyway.”

Snorting at this, Ashe enters his class and collapses on his chair. “Alright, this is my class.”

“Nice,” Yuri says, wandering to one of the posters on grammar and spelling Ashe has pinned to the wall. The back of the room is filled with one of his classes’ latest projects, mind maps on a character of their choice in _Hamlet._ It occurs to Ashe that this might be the first classroom Yuri has ever seen.

Rebooting his computer he says, “Are you okay with just sitting there while I work? I should be done soon, and then we can head home.”

Distracted by the tiny book collection Ashe has at the front of the room, Yuri nods. “Sure. Of course, sparrow.”

While Ashe is immersed in his work, Yuri wanders around his classroom, picking apart books and bending down to look into empty desks, staring out the window to Ashe’s view of the teacher’s parking lot, the shadows deepening outside as time passes, the sun sinking behind houses.

Taking a quick pause, Ashe stretches out, back cracking and popping audibly. He pauses at the sight of Yuri asleep on the desk in front of him, head in curled arms and hidden from view. His form changes easier when he’s asleep, Ashe finds. He doesn’t see it often but he does now, the way the shadows shift and dance in circles around him while his physical body ripples like water, its image wavering, warping to something larger, uncontainable in a room so small.

Yuri’s never fallen asleep in front of him before. It’s a small note to make, how Yuri trusts Ashe enough to fall asleep in front of him, but it brings a smile to Ashe’s face.

“Yuri.” Quietly, Ashe touches where he approximates his shoulder to be but feels like the edge of a knife.

“Mmh.”

“I’m done my work now.”

Yuri mumbles incomprehensibly. He wakes slowly, slumber’s hold heavy and clinging as he rubs his eyes and looks up, form solidifying as more time passes. “You’re done?”

“Yeah.”

Around a yawn, Yuri manages, “That’s great, sparrow. Let’s go home, now? I’m hungry.”

Knowing that some things are left unsaid, Ashe simply waits for him to wake properly, and walks with him to the station.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


There’s an odd noise that comes from the kitchen when Ashe leaves the washroom, late into the night after watching multiple cat videos. Squinting into the darkness, Ashe finds no answer in the hallway, and ventures further out to the odd rustling beyond.

When he sees what’s in the kitchen, his scream shrivels up and dies in his throat.

A dark hulking thing towers over the kitchen table, takes up so much space that there’s nowhere to move, nowhere to breathe. An incomprehensible mass of black that beats like a heartbeat, the shapes shifting so often that Ashe struggles to keep - he thinks he sees a flash of wings, an unblinking eye - until he chokes, squeezes his eyes shut like it’ll erase what he’s seen. The wrongness of it is what strikes him, how the thing he’s seeing simply shouldn’t be there, the same way it’s unexpected to run into a student outside of school but turned all the way up to something that screams, _danger._

His memory rewrites the otherworldly being he saw, makes it a blurry, unreadable thing; Ashe comes to trembling on the floor, being shaken awake. Yuri’s speaking to him, the sound slow to filter through, like it’s coming from a barely-working radio: “Sparrow, sparrow. Are you okay? I’m sorry, I thought you were asleepー”

“What,” Ashe mumbles, glancing up at Yuri, registering the major changes, the two extra sets of eyes below his regular ones, now without sclera, the clawed hands holding him up, black all the way to his shoulders before it fades back into his regular skin colour, the pair of wings overshadowing them. “...Yuri?”

“Yes,” Yuri says gently, mouth wider than usual with a row of sharp teeth. It reminds Ashe of when they first met. “How are you feeling?”

“I...” Ashe places a hand to his aching head, feels split in two. “What was that, what happened? There was something in the kitchen.”

“Let’s get you a drink first, okay?” Yuri helps him up into the living room without much of a struggle, drapes a blanket over Ashe’s shoulders and returns with hot chocolate. All throughout, Ashe stares longer, open in his curiosity, the throbbing in his head slowly fading into something that just leaves small black spots in his vision.

Taking a careful sip of his drink, Ashe asks, “Can you explain what I saw now?”

“Right.” Inhuman as he looks right now, Yuri still threads his clawed hands through his hair the same way. “That was me.”

“What?”

“My truest form as a demon. It’s difficult for me to keep this human form throughout the day, so sometimes I transform into that for a few hours. I didn’t think you would be awake. I should’ve checked if you were asleep before I did anything.”

“Oh.” That had been Yuri. This was Yuri now. “Is this form easier to keep?”

Yuri does a double take. “What?”

“This form,” Ashe presses. “Is this one easier for you to maintain?”

“It’s a little closer to my true form, so comparatively, yes.”

“I don’t mind it. You can use this form when you’re here.”

Yuri blinks at him with all four eyes. “How are you not scared?”

“Why would I be scared of you? You’ve never hurt me.”

“I could. I’m a threat, like this.”

“So is anyone else if they tried hard enough. Aren’t you being a little hypocritical, with what you told me in November?”

“That’s different,” Yuri scoffs, a dark glint in his eyes, the kind of self-hate that shatters on the inside; Ashe would know, because sometimes he sees it in the mirror. “You’re different. This is different. You’re not a literal demon. The blood on your hands is accidental; mine was purposeful.”

“ _Was;_ you’re not like that anymore.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that I still killed them. I was complicit; I’m not innocent.”

“Then let us both be guilty together, if you’re going to let the past hang onto you,” Ashe says. “Is this what you want? The opposite of what you told me? That people aren’t capable of change and shouldn’t seek atonement for their mistakes?”

“Iー” Sighing, Yuri draws away with a groan. “You’re _not_ making this easy, sparrow. How many times have I told you that I’m dangerous?”

“Big deal,” Ashe says. He stands in front of Yuri, arms spread. “Fine then, since you’re as _dangerous_ as you want me to believe, prove it. Hurt me, kill me right now, I don’t care. Try me.”

Yuri’s mouth flaps uselessly, trying to find something to say. The look of befuddlement and frustration is so new that Ashe laughs, even as Yuri bares sharpened teeth. “Fuck you.”

“It’s not that I don’t think you’re dangerous, but you wouldn’t hurt me. I trust you, Yuri.” To prove this, Ashe slowly lowers himself in front of him, arms in Yuri’s lap, gazing up with an all-encompassing smile.

“You shouldn’t.” Yuri shifts minutely, but makes no move to push Ashe off.

“It’s too bad you can’t change my mind.”

“What.”

Ashe smiles. “I love you.” Maybe he had known that all along; maybe it had taken seeing Yuri like this to get him to see it, to say it himself.

Yuri’s eyes flick to his and away, muttering, “I don’t understand you at all, sparrow,” and Ashe laughs. The sound has Yuri calming, ruffled feathers smoothing out. “Even when I look like this?”

“Especially when you look like this,” Ashe confirms, grabbing Yuri’s hand. “Oh.”

“What?”

Ashe giggles. “Your hands are a little bigger than mine in this form.”

“It’s the claws.” Yuri lets him measure against each other, palm-to-palm, and Ashe feels the weight of him against his, the years stretching out through the age lines to meet in the middle between them.

“They’re as soft as they were the first time you held my hands.” Ashe links their hands together. “Do you remember that?”

“The McDonald’s visit, how could I forget.”

“So, you understand now?”

“What?”

“We’re not so different, you and I.”

Silently, Ashe beams up at Yuri, who stares back, unimpressed. He snorts when Ashe pokes him in the cheek, gives in with a smile. “Okay, fine, you win, sparrow. Is there anything else you want from me?”

Ashe makes to shake his head, but the sight of Yuri’s wings stops him. Indulgently, Yuri smirks. “What? Something got your attention?”

“Yes,” Ashe declares without humiliation. “Your wings, can Iー?”

“Go ahead.”

There’s a purple tint to Yuri’s black wings when they move in the light. They’re soft to the touch with firm bone underneath, and Ashe remembers Yuri’s words, about angels and demons having a few similarities; this must also be one.

“Two sins,” Yuri says.

“Hm?”

“I changed my mind. You have two sins; the second is falling for me.”

Ashe snorts and shakes his head ruefully, because if there’s one thing he knows for sureー “Love isn’t a sin, and loving you certainly isn’t.” He pauses, doubt seeping into his mind as Yuri shivers under his touch. “This doesn’t...make you uncomfortable, does it?”

Yuri raises a brow at the question. “I don’t let just anyone hold my hand and touch my wings, you know."

Flustered as he is, in the dead of night, Ashe doesn’t hold back his laughter.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Ashe wakes from a dream to find another centimetres away from him, stretched out on his bed and sound asleep, breathing softly, because, as Ashe discovered last night, demons have hearts, too, ones with inconsistent heartbeats when Ashe presses his ear to Yuri’s chest to hear it. And Ashe knows some dreams are tsunami-scale, grand forces of their own, like shooting for the moon or participating in the Olympics, while other dreams are ripples in a lake, like going to bed before 10pm on a weekday.

This is one of the latter, Ashe finds, hand outstretched to grasp Yuri’s hand, pressing a reverent kiss to each knuckle as Yuri sleeps on, unaware, his physical form, like all dreams, difficult to captureーbecause as much as the two of them have hurt and been hurting, they’re here for each other now, and nothing will change that, not until Ashe dies, and maybe not even then.

But it would be a waste to wonder what the uncertain future holds in store, so Ashe snuggles closer and closes his eyes, because time is better spent sleeping in on weekendsーor, at least, as much sleeping in as Katya allows until she invades their bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](https://unchartedandunkown.tumblr.com/)   
>  [Twitter](https://twitter.com/phaedinphaedout)


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